Measuring Tourists Emotional Experiences toward Destinations: Development of the Destination Emotion

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Measuring Tourists Emotional Experiences toward
Destinations Development of the Destination
Emotion Scale

• Dr Sameer Hosany
• Royal Holloway, University of London
• School of Management Research Seminar
• 16 Jan 2008

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Background

• For years, consumer research has assumed a
  rational model of buying behaviour.
• However, much criticism from prominent scholars
  (e.g. Hoch Loewenstein, 1991 Holbrook and
  Hirschman.
• Shift to a more reactive view that emphasises the
  role of emotional responses during consumption.

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Background

• Consumers are perceived to derive hedonic
  gratification or engage in fantasies, feelings
  and fun in response to meanings of products
  (goods, services, events and ideas) they consume.
• Over the years, consumer research has established
  emotions as an important area of investigation.

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Emotion in Consumer Research Some Applications

• Advertising
• Edell and Burke (1987 Holbrook and Batra (1987)
  Mattila (1999)
• Retailing
• Donovan and Rossiter (1982) Hui et al. (1997)
  Dawson et al. (1990) Sherman et al., (1997)
  Machleit and Eroglu (2000)
• Customer Satisfaction
• Oliver (1994) Mano and Oliver (1993) Bloemer
  and de Ruyter (1999)

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Background

• However, empirical research in the field of
  tourism remains sparse.
• Due to growing competition, destinations are
  under greater pressure to understand the crucial
  components of meaningful tourist experiences.
• A need to recognise the experiential qualities of
  their offerings

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Research Objectives

• Yet, academic research on the affective
  meanings/dimensions of tourists experience has
  only appeared recently (e.g. Ekinci Hosany,
  2006).
• Emotional reactions to the holiday experience
  influence post-consumption behaviours such as
  evaluation of satisfaction, behavioural intention
  and attitude judgements.
• This research attempts to fill an important gap
  in the literature by empirically investigating
  the dimensions of tourists emotional experiences
  toward holiday destinations.

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Conceptualisation of Emotion in Consumer Research

• Tendency for marketers to borrow and adapt
  measures from psychology.
• Some most commonly used scales include
• Izard (1977) Differential Emotions Scale (DES)
  interest, enjoyment, surprise, distress, anger,
  disgust, contempt, fear, shame and guilt.
• Plutchik (1980) 8 primary emotions of fear,
  anger, joy, sadness, acceptance, disgust,
  expectancy and surprise
• Mehrabian Russell (1974) Pleasure Arousal
  Dominance (PAD)
• Watson et al. (1988) Positive and Negative Affect
  Schedule (PANAS)
• Richins (1997), after realising the limitations
  of these measures, developed the Consumption
  Emotion Set (CES).
• Two broad competing approaches dimensional
  approach and categorical approach

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Methodology

• Study draws on the accepted paradigm for scale
  development (e.g. Churchill, 1979 Anderson
  Gerbing, 1982 Bentler Bonnet, 1980 Nunally
  Bernstein, 1994).
• Reflective vs. formative approach
• Reflective the underlying latent construct
  causes the observed variation in the measure
• Formative approach the direction of causality
  flows from indicators to the latent construct,
  and the indicators, as a group, jointly determine
  the conceptual and empirical meaning of the
  construct)

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Development of the DES
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Methodology Generating Emotion Items

• Pilot tests on emotion measures from psychology
  (e.g. Plutchik, 1980 Izard, 1977 Mehrabian and
  Russell, 1974 Watson et al., 1988).
• Results inconclusive
• Three set of focus groups
• Use of projective techniques (word association)

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Methodology

• 74 statements - across eight primary emotion
  anger, fear, love, sadness, joy, surprise, shame
  and interest
• Emotion item measured on a 7 point scale anchored
  by 1Not at all to 7Very Much (e.g. Nyer, 1997)
• E.g. I felt Active, I felt a sense of Joy, I
  felt a sense of humiliation, I felt a sense of
  Displeasure
• Use of retrieval hypothesis (Solomon et al.,
  1999), respondents were instructed to recall
  their most recent vacation outside the UK during
  the past six months.

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Methodology

• Other constructs
• Overall satisfaction Overall, how satisfied
  were you with the destination (-3extremely
  dissatisfied 3extremely satisfied)
• An attitude toward the destination How would
  describe your overall feeling about the
  destination(-3disliked very much 3likeld very
  much)
• Intention to recommend How likely that you would
  recommend this destination to your
  friends/family/colleagues as a destination
  (-3extremely unlikely 3extremely likely)

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Profile of Respondents

• Data collected in a UK city face to face
  administration
• N200.
• 52.5 males 48.5 females.
• 49 were on their first visit to the destination
  evaluated.
• Main purpose for travel leisure(74.8)

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Findings

• Some emotion are experienced with greater
  intensity while others, more specifically
  negative emotions have relatively low mean
  scores.
• Five emotions achieving the highest mean scores
  enjoyment (M5.79 SD1.35) Happiness (M5.48
  SD1.20) Entertained (M5.53 SD1.40) Pleasure
  (M5.48 SD1.45) Cheerful (M5.42 SD1.30).
• Lowest reported mean scores were Agony (M1.22
  SD0.82) Ashamed (M1.22 SD0.87) Humiliation
  (M1.23 SD0.76) Disgust (M1.25 SD0.83)
  Rejection (M1.25 SD0.86)

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DES Exploratory Factor Analysis

• All negatively valence emotions violated the
  normality assumption and were dropped.
• The 44 remaining positive emotion items -
  exploratory factor analysis with Varimax rotation
  and scree test criterion to identify the number
  of factors.
• Criteria for significance of factor loadings was
  0.40 (Hair et al., 1998).
• A three factor solution emerged joy, love and
  positive surprise.

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Relationship between Emotions, Satisfaction and
Post-Consumption Behaviours

• Model 1 Overall Satisfaction
• R2 23 p0.00
• Model 2 Attitude towards the Destination
• R2 24 p0.00
• Model 3 Intention to Recommend
• R2 13 p0.00
• In summary, regression results suggest that
  having an understanding of tourists emotional
  responses might be useful in judging
  satisfaction, intention to recommend and
  attitudes.

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Study 2 Validation sample

• Data collected in a UK city mail survey
• Sample size N520 (36 male, 64 female).
• Age group 16-24 (9) 25-34 (18) 35-44 (18)
  45-54 (20) 55 and above (35).
• 44 were on their first visit to the destination
  evaluated.
• Main purpose of visit leisure (75).

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CFA Results (LISREL)

• 24-item, 3 dimensional confirmatory model
  estimated using LISREL
• A final 9-item model
• Joy cheerful, pleasure, entertained
• Love sentimental, loving, affection
• Surprise amazed, astonished, surprise
• ?2 (24)78.14 GFI0.97 AGFI0.94 NNFI0.96
  CFI0.97 standardised RMR0.035 RMSEA0.0067

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Discussions and Study Contributions

• Development of a valid and reliable scale
  measuring tourists emotional experiences toward
  destinations (The DES).
• Three dimensional structure joy, love and
  positive surprise (consistent with past studies
  that have established the importance and
  relevance of these emotions in consumer
  research).
• Contrast with previous studies the 3 dimensions
  capture only positive valence emotions.

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Discussions and Study Contributions

• The absence of negative emotions attributed to
  the hedonic nature of the holiday experience
  which is rich in terms of positive emotional
  elements.
• People take holidays mainly for leisure purposes
  in anticipation of memorable positive feelings
  tourists try to experience positive emotions and
  avoid negative ones.
• So...tentative conclusion
• Is the emergence of a negative emotion
  dimension, in consumer research where the
  presented stimuli is of a desirable, pleasant and
  goal congruent nature, a methodological artefact?

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Practical Implications

• An understanding of how tourists react to, or
  benefit from their experiences will enable to
  formulation of appropriate marketing strategies
  (segmentation, positioning and communication).
• For example, Destination marketers should
  activate, stimulate and promote positive emotions
  (joy, love and positive surprise) in their
  advertising campaigns.

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Limitations

• Causes of emotional responses not investigated
  applying cognitive appraisal theories?
• Specific to British culture only emotion terms
  have different meanings in different cultures.
• Study conducted at post-consumption stage.
  Experiences recalled could be mere
  reconstructions and might not reflect what
  actually happened.

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• Thank You
• Any Questions?